Thank you, coffee.

This article is part of the USA Women's Eagles blog. All articles are written exclusively by Women's Eagles themselves.

Here's a rundown of my weekend. Saturday I did an outdoor boot camp led by one of my friends... in the rain. It's not supposed to rain in San Diego, by the way, but it was in the park by the bay so I wasn't upset about it. Yesterday I got early morning coffee with my teammates, got fresh vegetables from the Farmer's Market and ended the day skateboarding on the boardwalk with my dog. And this morning, I was swimming in an outdoor pool at 6 am. All of this in the middle of December.

Not only does December in San Diego mean good friends, beach days and heated pools, it also means two months until Atlanta 7s and just eight months until the fifteens World Cup. So naturally, that means a lot of hard work behind the scenes in preparation. I mean, we've really got to run hard to get the metabolism going so we can all stuff ourselves with home-cooked meals over the holidays. Oh... I mean, so we can get in shape for those small rugby events I mentioned earlier.

For the next two weeks, I, along with my glorious teammates, will be waking up bright and early to jump in the pool before sunrise. We do this as one part of our recovery program so that we can shake the legs out and get moving before the day's even ready for us. I read a quote by Seneca the other day that, to me, highlights the importance of an early start:

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.

We as Eagles are set out to accomplish great things. It's fortunate that my teammates are all such great people, so we're a step ahead already. But in order to be the best in the world, we've got to utilize all the time we're blessed with to our advantage. For some of my teammates, that means getting up way before work to run intervals or hitting the gym hard after a long day. For some, it might mean analyzing video on a Friday night when all of your friends are out to dinner or throwing 100 passes at the end of the day when your body is exhausted from three sessions an hour-and-a-half each. And it means placing importance on things like recovery, “precovery” and all of the coveries because those who recover the best will be able to train the hardest for the longest time. [Insert something profound from our trainers/nutritionists here] I'm sure they'd love to hear how right I think they are :)

Two weeks of early rising and "fun runs" and conditioning "games" are music to my ears because I know I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to do what I love and continue to get better every day. We've even managed to sneak Shaina in to the OTC somehow for a while, and this time it's not from inside of a helicopter. But I'll leave that story for her to tell. I've got to get off this computer because it's a whopping 5:30 pm and that's approaching time to settle down for a long winter's nap.